Robert Irwin - New Sculpture/Configurations

Irwin, who began his career in the 1950s as a painter and became a pioneer of the L.A.-based Light and Space movement in the 1960s, has, through a continual breaking down of the frame, made art that is "conditional," responding to the context of its specific environment. He employs a wide range of media, ranging from fluorescent lights to fabric scrims, colored and tinted gels, paint, wire, acrylic, and glass. But Irwin notes the medium of his fluorescent works, for instance, as "Light + Shadow + Reflection + Color"-displacing emphasis away from the materials themselves, and drawing our attention to the act of perception itself.